In which the pond offers the dog botherer as a Sunday meditation ...

Well there's an unfortunate juxtaposition with which to start a meditative Sunday.

Not a day after Polonius mused about a freak show, the full-on freaks went on Sunday bonnet parade, as noted in the NY Times and WaPo ...

  

But clearly Polonius was right. Clearly he's no fool, he's a very stable genius ... and by the way, the pond is now entering into final negotiations with Polonius. He's very keen on the harbor bridge the pond has for sale, and so to the disappointment of many keen bidders it must be withdrawn from bidding...

Don't kick yourself, there'll always be another chance, the pond is thinking of offering the Anzac bridge as a way of celebrating invasion day ...

Of course one of the key features of the Donald, apart from his tweetstorms, is his capacity for mindless ranting ... and speaking of that, the pond regrets that it undersold the dog botherer yesterday, because he routinely manages mindlessly stupid rants down there with the Donald, and yesterday's was a beauty ...

Yesterday the pond dismissed the rant with a cheap jibe ... cheap in the sense that the pond borrowed it for free from Gadfly ...

Chris was a valet to Lord Downer, when Alexander was foreign minister, and later became an adviser to the Member for Goldman Sachs, Malcolm Turnbull, skilfully helping the then leader of the opposition turn Utegate and Godwin Grech into a political triumph. The Daily’s scribe also won some monies from the ABC last year for not having sex with dogs. “To the extent that I am remembered for this,” he said at the time, “I’ll be remembered as the journalist called a dog fucker who stood up for his rights.” These days Kenny Doesn’t Rogers performs as a one-trick pony at the Daily, telling his comatose readers the ABC is awful, the awful ABC is awfully awful and how much more awful the ABC can get, etc. (here, but it'll use up a click on the Saturday Paper).

How unfair was that? It barely scrapes the surface of the dog botherer's paranoia, misery and despair.

Of course the one thing we must not do is mention Chairman Rupert, Fox News, the WSJ, and all the rest of them who have invested so heavily in the Donald and now see the world run by social media zeitgeist ...

But when you work for an actual cancer, how would you have the first clue that you're just one of the metastasized cells, becoming, as it were, one of those irritating metastic tumours ...

Now the pond doesn't like this sort of metaphor, cancer being a serious business, but it was the dog botherer who raised the issue ... along with assorted other furphies ...

Did anyone defend anyone wanting to defend someone driving while under the influence of methadone?

They'd be defending a criminal act:

It is illegal for anyone to drive if, by being under the influence of a drug/s, they are incapable of having proper control of a vehicle. This includes methadone and, if suspected, the driver can be subjected to a drug test. Breaking this law carries penalties including disqualification from driving, heavy fines and/or imprisonment. Mixing methadone with other substances further increases the risk of accident. For instance, even a small amount of alcohol taken with methadone can impair an individual’s driving skills and put them at risk of a serious accident. Methadone may also affect the client’s ability when operating heavy machinery or playing sport. Until a client is stabilised on a particular dose of methadone, it is safer if they avoid driving a car or operating machinery. This is particularly important during the first few weeks of treatment or when the methadone dose is changed. (here)

But in a reptile culture of complaint, whining and moaning, a mingled sense of paranoia and persecution, it's the quality, the width and the depth of the whinge that counts ... you know, the sort that blathers about futile gestures, as if being a member of the political/media class and having a hand in the Iraq war wasn't a classic example of epic futility ...

Where has this sort of crap led the world?

It goes without saying that the dog botherer shares the Donald's attitude to climate science ... and is perfectly happy to fuck the planet ...

Around this point the pond is always inspired to ask how a socialist who fought in the Spanish Civil War against the fascists and stayed true to his own peculiar brand of socialism throughout his life, is now trotted out by fuckwits of the dog botherer kind as some kind of Orwellian adjective?

And then the pond remembers where all this fuckwittery inevitably leads ...

Okay, here the cartoon would run a little differently ... perhaps "How the west was lost ... Barners gave it to Gina, or Gina gave Barners a cheque, or the taxpayers gave the money to an Indian billionaire ..."

And okay, the pond will confess it needed to drop in a few cartoons just to make it through this sort of dog botherer carry-on ...

The pond appreciates that it's therapy for him, lathering up an impotent storm of unhappiness and rage, and so the pond needs its own cartoon therapy.

All the dog botherer's agitation about sundry matters in a changing world took the pond back to the time of the banning of certain forms of light bulbs and the moaning and the wailing and the flailing about and the beating of breasts and the wearing of cilices and doom-laden predictions of the end of the world ...

The pond still has its collector's item, a 1988 Compton bulb celebrating the centenary of the introduction of street lightning in Tamworth, the first in Australia.

And now it has Barners ...

Ah well, never mind, just remember that a few short years ago the reptiles were in a state of dire indignation and outrage about light bulbs, and then it passed. Like the Donald, they're easily distracted; unfortunately, like the Donald, they have a tendency to break the train set while playing ...

There's no solution to this.

The world will keep on changing and reptiles like the dog botherer will keep on moaning, frequently about trivial things, while at the same time managing to fuck the lives of millions of people, say by helping bung on that notorious war in Iraq ... or in the case of the Chairman, helping get the Donald elected and then sticking through him thick and thin ...

This is a handy form of distraction while the real pillaging can go on ...

You know, get agitated about plastic bags or helium balloons, while the real fucking of the planet for benefit of gated communities and billionaires can continue apace ...

And where are the moderates who might ameliorate this sort of collective madness?

What, you think Mitt offers some hope?

The dog botherer might come to some understanding? 

The dog botherer might at last apologise from the heart and resign from cancer central? 

Sadly, the pond thinks that's unlikely to happen this year, and the social media madness is likely to continue ...